Cost of the Wars since 2001

Some Outside Data

Spaf has an entry in Wikipedia! It appears fairly accurate (and no, I didn't enter it myself :-). It could use some updates, so if you need info to do that feel free to contact me.

Obituary

Spaf has prewritten his obituary to save some effort and attempts at fiction for when the time comes.

Science Scouts

Science Scouts homepage is found online. If you read my bio and/or meet me, you know I have qualified for the following badges:

A Recent April Fools Joke

I have a tradition of big April Fools jokes, although not every year. Here's one from 2008, along with pictures.

Some Philosophy

Here are the quotes from my old Unix .plan file. I used to add quotes when I found any that strongly resonate with my own world view. Now, I sometimes post those to Twitter or Pinterest. Your mileage may vary. I have a much longer collection I will put online someday.

Some Humor(?)

Humor is very important in my life. I delight in the absurd and in the unexpected. i really enjoy puns and wordplay. However, as someone with few taboos, my humor may be a little edgy for many people.

Spaf's Journal contains various narratives of my travels and experiences. Many people find these to be somewhat amusing as I tend to have ...er... adventures.

The Yucks Digest was something I have been moderating since 1990. It is a digest of the peculiar, repulsive, bizarre, tasteless, ironic, and sometimes humorous. It has appeared sporadically in recent years, and is now a closed Google group.

One of my students, Mahesh Tripunitara, has constructed a WWW page of analogies that I have used in class, in talks and in advising. He seems to find these amusing, as do the people who contribute to the page.

The web-heads list is something I started in late 1994 as an informal means of exchanging pointers to strange and interesting web sites. Many people seem to share my views. Several of the links are to sites with "adult" themes, so beware! (Converted to a Tumblr blog in about 2010.)

Recycling. What do you do with your computer mice when they are worn out? Donate them to Purdue's Project Viper for recycling!

What does Spaf look like in the morning before several cups of coffee? Not a pretty sight! Get some brewed!

I wrote up a long post with history of the Spafford/Spofforth/etc. family with my line of descent, and pictures of Spofforth castle. It distills all of the material I was able to find in my research, and presents the simplest overview.

A book published in 1888 written by Jeremiah Spofford has some of the definitive early history of the Spafford/Spofford family. It is available online. There is also a slightly different history, with well-research additional material, was produced by Capt. Ralph Spofforth in the 1940s.

Spaf as the Net's Vegan

Back in the days when Usenet was actually interesting, and when people posting things spent time and effort to be creative and amusing, Spaf was known as the Net's resident extraterrestrial (from Vega). This led to many instances where confused people asked about Vegans (the ultra-orthodox vegetarians) and Spaf replied. This, of course, was back before Spaf basically quit the Usenet.

I have a large archive of amusing things from the early days on the net. These are a few of the postings that most people seem to remember for some reason. Interestingly, a search of Google does not find all of these.

In my role as an alien on the net, I felt compelled to provide answers to questions that sometimes weren' even posed to me, for instance an essay on Vegans and honey.

Vegans on tonga plugs. This started when someone (either myself or Rich Rosen, the usual instigators of this form of nonsense) made a posting mentioning "tonga plugs" (the prior post). Several people who didn't know better inquired, and this is what they got (see also the followup).